Why is cyber security awareness and training for employees a must?

In today’s era, most of the organizations have shifted their businesses online. Many of the services are present on cloud. Customers are accessing services on applications and websites. It is, therefore, very important to ensure the cyber security of an organization. For more than a decade, organizations have been investing in traditional cyber security measures like Firewall, sophisticated IT protocol, comprehensive cyber security defence etc. It becomes extremely important for organizations to strengthen the most vital and crucial link of an organization’s cyber security; its employees.

Why do attackers target employees?

For stealing sensitive and confidential information: including thefts of source codes, employee details, client details, contractual information as well as other confidential data. Cyber-attacks have cost more than $600 billion in a year.

For monetary benefits: In recent years, organizations have been hit with an increasing number of ransomware attacks. The main motive behind an increase in this number is because of the financial gains that attackers have. They demand ransom and many organizations unwillingly pay the ransomware. One of the recent cases includes the case of Riviera Beach. It is a small city with a population of about 35,000 people. The city became the latest government to be hit by ransomware attacks that have forced the authorities to pay ransom amounting to about $592,000 in order to restore their networks.

To damage the reputation of an organization: Organizations may still recover from a financial loss but any harm to its reputation can destroy it completely. Customers start losing their trust in the organization thus, harming the organizations’ reputation permanently.

Why do employees need cyber security awareness and security training?

Every employee in the organization is a probable target when it comes to cyber-attacks. Cyber attackers have different attack methodology for different level of employees, therefore, increasing the scope of probable victims. As per the statistics, 90% of the cyber attacks are a result of employee negligence. Two-third of the employees have admitted that they have very limited knowledge of cyber security. One- third had a very blurry knowledge about ransomware whereas half of the employees were unable to recognise the concept of point-of-sale malware. In fact, a survey found that 97% of the employees could not even identify phishing attack.

To worsen the situation, less than half of the organizations find themselves ready to fight cyber-attacks along with the increasing sophistication and the advancement in cyber-attacks. Hackers are constantly evolving their approaches and deployment methodology and thus, organizations should constantly upgrade their defence training to keep the vulnerabilities low.

Cyber security and awareness training helps organizations in training and educating employees about different threats and the methodology used by attackers to deploy various cyber-attacks. Tools like ThreatCop help in developing a defence mechanism against cyber attacks with its four-step cycle that includes simulating cyber-attacks and learning modules related to them. Organizations have seen up to 72% reduction in the cyber-attacks with appropriate cyber security training. With periodic learning modules, employees can gradually rewire themselves to identify cyber threats and defend themselves against real life cyber-attacks.